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Adding Salt in Your Coffee: Yay Or Nay?

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Brandon Pierce
September 24, 2022

Key Takeaways

Added sea salt may also include antioxidants & healthy minerals.

Too much salt in coffee is risky for those with high blood pressure.

Salt improves metabolic efficiency & water retention.

Salt may help reduce bitterness & enhance sweet or savory flavors.

Add a pinch of salt after your brew, if you are interested in testing it out for yourself.

Nothing makes us happier as coffee lovers than hearing how healthy our favorite beverage is.

Nothing provides an energy boost like morning coffee. And we all know how much we need this boost to begin our day.

Drinking salty coffee provides many more health advantages than you may realize. It includes the presence of extremely potent antioxidants.

Besides, you may expect to acquire minerals like potassium and magnesium from each cup. It also lowers the chances of dementia, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease.

When you add sugar and cream to coffee, it becomes less healthy. Sugar, creamers, and flavors are empty calories.

They are solely there to make coffee more palatable, not to add calories.

Many individuals enjoy their coffee with a dash of sugar or cream first thing in the morning. However, did you know that some individuals prefer to use salt instead?

Salty coffee has lately resurfaced as a popular fad, and many people want to know if it is beneficial for you or not. Salted coffee, it turns out, has certain advantages.

We'll explain why adding salt in your morning coffee is a good idea in this post.

Salted Coffee: A History

Salt was so rare in ancient times that some historians believe it was as precious as gold.


However, salt is now abundant, inexpensive, and widely available. The more widely available it became, the more people began experimenting with and appreciating salty coffee.

Some baristas in 2021 want to combine sweet and savory components in their drinks.

To achieve the sweet/savory balance, a barista could utilize sugar and salt in a café mocha, for example.

barista in 2021

Is Putting Salt in Coffee Beneficial?

The short answer is it depends on the scenario. Putting too much salt in coffee is risky for high blood pressure patients. While not obtaining enough salt overall in your food can also be harmful. 

Salt provides several physiological advantages. Such as increased metabolic efficiency, central nervous system functioning, and relaxed muscle responses.

Dehydration occurs due to the lack of salt in the body, and it can also develop due to excessive coffee use.

is putting salt in coffee is beneficial

 Caffeine serves as a diuretic, so it stimulates urination. And peeing frequently can reduce the quantity of salt in the body. Coffee drinkers can counteract this by adding salt to their coffee.

Will Adding Salt to Coffee Grounds Make It Less Bitter?

Some studies were conducted to what makes coffee bitter.

Most of us believe that caffeine is what makes coffee bitter, yet caffeine accounts for just 15% of the bitterness in coffee.

So, the primary causes of bitter coffee are the most common chemical components of coffee:

  • The chlorogenic acid
  • Lactones
  • Phenylindanes

These chemicals are antioxidants and can only be found in roasted beans. That is, they are not found naturally in raw coffee beans.

As a result of the concentration of both antioxidants, it is reasonable to assume that intensely roasted brews have a lot more bitterness.

Bitter coffee is an acquired taste and not everyone will enjoy it.

Even when high-quality coffee grounds are mildly roasted, chlorogenic acid lactones are produced. 

The chlorogenic acid lactones are broken down into phenylindanes when the coffee beans continue to roast.

When you add salt to your favorite brew can help to mask the taste of these components and reduce the bitter taste.

bitter coffee

Does Salted Coffee Make Your Taste buds Happy?

What tastes good or bad in coffee is frequently a question of personal preference.

Some coffee drinkers want their coffee sweet and would not consider drinking it without sugar; others prefer no sugar at all in their coffee. It all depends on your taste buds. 

Some coffee aficionados like black coffee, while others refuse to drink it. Whether one prefers coffee with or without sugar — with or without milk — putting salt into it may enhance both sweet and savory flavors.

Note: Salt can improve the nutty tastes of some black coffees. 

Even if no sugar is added, added salt to coffee can boost its sweetness, making it less harsh and more mellow. And salt can improve the fragrance of freshly prepared black coffee.

Many coffee enthusiasts have commented on how much they appreciate the scent of freshly brewed coffee.

A pinch of salt in coffee can enhance that aroma while cutting down the bitter flavor.

taste buds

Although a little salt can improve the flavor of sugar-free, milk-free black coffee, it can also complement caffeinated beverages that utilize a lot of milk and sugar, such as a hot chocolate or a caramel latte.

Several coffee shops and restaurants use the precise term "salted caramel."

Coffee is typically friendlier on the taste buds when sweetened with sugar rather than honey, as is the case with tea.

However, honey may be an enticing substitute for sugar in some coffee preparations — and when honey is used to sweeten the brew, the addition of salt can enhance the taste of the honey.

How Do You Add Salt to Coffee?

Proponents of adding salt to brewed coffee use terms such as "a sprinkle of salt," "a dash of salt," or "a touch of kosher salt."

That's because baristas who use salt in coffee grounds prefer to use it sparingly.

And there are several approaches to take while adding kosher salt. 

One method is to add a pinch of salt to the ground your coffee before brewing it; the salt will dissolve during the brewing process.

Other baristas, on the other hand, prefer adding salt shortly after the coffee is prepared.


The key to using salt in ground coffee is to not overdo it; coffee should still be handled as coffee, not as French fries!

Some baristas are suspicious about the use of salt in coffee because they don't mix.

Other baristas, however, strongly disagree, and they use moderate quantities, whether they make it with or without milk — or with or without sugar.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I prefer drinking coffee black and respectfully reject cream and sugar when offered.

If asked about adding salt, I'd probably smile and reply, "no, thank you".

Adding salt to coffee is not as strange as it may appear at first, but I enjoy the taste of black coffee and prefer to not have any additives at all.

A sprinkle of salt, however, is traditionally added to coffee beverages in Northern Scandinavia, Siberia, Turkey, and Hungary. 

When brackish water is accessible, such as in coastal places where fresh water from rivers meets the sea, it is simply used to make coffee.

This water has a salt level of 0.5-3 per cent, which is lower than the usual salt content of 3.5 per cent in saltwater. This results in a stronger flavor and greater foaming.


Brandon Pierce

About the author

My name is Brandon and I love cold-brew coffee. If you're a fan of everything homebrew, then we'll get along just fine. I also enjoy riding my Onewheel around town, and going on adventures with my future wife! As an online work-from-home advocate, it's important that I stay connected to the world while being able to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

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